Fried Mind

The load is coming off my shoulders.
The cat is at his new home.
The house is now completely empty of our belongings (not the garage yet)

The papers are signed.
The money is not in our bank yet, but that's expected by tomorrow morning.
Our room here is slowly turning from a tornado warzone, back into a lovely bedroom.
Tomorrow morning will be the first morning since school started that I'm not dashing back to our house.

now focus can be back on
helping the kids with homework
cooking dinner
keeping my in-laws house in order
showering, and make-up applying
lunch dates with girlfriends
other tasks that have been on the back burner

Can you tell my sentence structure is suffering from a fried mind?
But hopefully I will get that back into working condition soon.

Need a planner

I haven't had a schedule this busy, since I was at BYU. For the past few years I've always owned a planner, but it usually sat untouched in my purse. It was so seldomly used, it almost felt like a joke to even own one. But not anymore. Without my planner I think I'd forget to get dressed. Sterling signed up for Cub scouts. Winter is going to try out gymnastics. I haven't even found a dance class for Ginger yet. And then there are the school teachers. Email is a wonderful form of communication, but when there are 4 new emails from 1 teacher, that's just overwhelming!! I can't keep up, it's almost like a full-time job keeping track of my kids' activities and whereabouts. LOL How other people do it, with their kids in multiple sports/activities, is beyond my imagination. I'm really hoping that this whole house selling/moving thing has a lot to do with the "overwhelmingness" of the current schedule.

Speaking of..... the house is clean! And everything is out of the house (except Joe's office and closet). Only a few random items remain in the garage and the yard. And no more stuff is coming to Liz's house!! Now can I take a nap please??

Hotter than Hell 100

The race took us 9.5 hours.
We made 3 pit stops.
There was plenty of sweat involved.
Our muscles got a workout.

What?, you thought we rode the Hotter than Hell 100? After all, that was Joe's plan for today.
But think again. We ran the race of moving. And we raced hard and long. And now we want to crash.

The house is almost completely empty. We brought furniture to 3 people's houses, and to our storage shipping container. We got a good deal on the container, but we're really only using half of it. Maybe I got rid of too much stuff? On second thought, this will make for an easier move once we come back to the US, or decide to ship our belongings over to Holland in the future.

All I need to worry about now, is cleaning the house on Monday morning, and unpacking all the stuff I brought into Liz's house. And I won't worry about Joe's office. Or his shop. Or the random things laying around the outside of the house. Or the repairs that still need to be done (except the little spot that needs to be painted). Tonight, I will just relax, and watch Ebay for Apple Macbooks!

Last night

This is it. The last night we all sleep on "the farm". Tomorrow morning we load up the beds and other furniture. Even though the house is half-empty, it still feels a little like home. It has to be a combination of the fact that we still have our couch and TV, and our internet to keep in touch with the world.

We're at that stage of moving, where you don't really know what to do with the leftovers. And one moment you can think that you're almost done, and the next you feel defeated. I'm having one of those rare accomplished feelings right now. Maybe it's because I cleaned off the kitchen counter, and vacuumed the living room. Or maybe it's because I've mentally written off Joe's office and anything that is outside the house. Oh... but even just writing that, makes the defeat set in again.

But I digress. As the clutter slowly disappears at our house, it is just as quickly piling up at the in-laws. Each morning I come back to their house with a carload of stuff, but then I don't have enough time to actually put it away. So our room is piled high with boxes, but those will have to wait until all is done at our house.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I can't see it yet, but I know it's there. Somewhere.

Keep on going

Yesterday I took a little break from all the moving stuff, and watched grandma in the morning. Her regular caregiver was sick, so I was called in last minute. I'm expecting for that to happen more often now that we live in the same house. It's actually a good thing, because I'm here anyways, and that way I can add some more money to our savings for the next year.

Today I had to get back to work though. After sending the kids off to school, I headed back over to the house. It's getting harder to decide what to do, especially since Joe is still living there. That kind of limits me on packing rooms like the kitchen and our bedroom. The kids bedrooms and bathroom are already completely empty and clean.

Each time I go to the house, I come with an empty suburban, and leave with it completely packed. Today's load was Goodwill stuff. The whole back was full of it. It's such a relief to just get rid of stuff we don't longer need. At home the driveway is still lined with leftovers from the garage sale, but slowly our furniture is being sold on Craigslist. I just keep reminding myself that all of this will be over in a week!

Ginger loves her school, and each morning she asks me over and over, when she can go to school. She normally rides the bus, but since we were coming from the house, I dropped her off. It was wonderful to see her huge grin when the traffic lady greeted her. I get about 3 hours of "no kids" each day, and today I stopped by some martial arts school to get info for Sterling. Then I thought I would check on Ballet school for Ginger too, but I didn't quite make it there. See, I passed the hair salon. And I did what any sensible woman would do: get a haircut. And I splurged on the blow dry too! And when I got home, I took a nap! What a great treat.

After this crazy week I will immerse myself in the organizing of our photos of the last 3 years, and making photo albums/ blog books as well. I've tried this in the past, without much luck. Now I will be more determined! Oh, and another fun thing to look forward to: as soon as the house sells, I will get myself a new Macbook laptop! I will need a computer in Holland, and I've wanted a Mac for a while now. As a reward for all my hard work with the move and selling the house, I'm going for it!! Can't wait to buy it!

Lost forever

Joe perfectly described what I feel right now.

I've never loved a dog. Dogs are stinky and slobbery and hairy.

But Justin is special.He came to us as a big furry ball. He loves us unconditionally. He never runs away. He protected my chickens for years. When you are outside, he will sit 20 feet back and just watch. With a smile on his face. When I pet him, he gets a little too hot for me (if you know what I mean). We never trained him, yet he is the best trained dog. He's huge, but to me he is still a puppy.

But now he's gone. And it's all my fault. I'm the one who wanted to to move. Mentally I knew that Justin would have to go, but emotionally I purposely didn't think about it.

And now I'm crying....By the way, it's impossible to get a good full-body shot of Justin, because any time you get at eye level, he comes straight to you. I only got this series, because I tricking him into getting onto his back, then ran back, and started taking pictures.

Wow, what a day!

Usually when I don't write on my blog, it's because nothing interesting/exciting is happening. Right now I haven't written in a few days, because I've been crazy busy. Whoever thought that moving, vacationing, and the start of school would be a smart thing to do all at the same time? Today I haven't sat down for more than 5 minutes, with the exception of dinner.

My schedule today:

6.45 am alarm goes off
7.30am drop 2 oldest kids off at school. Meet the teachers. Forget my camera to document the "first day of school".
7.45am Drive "home" to Leonard. Pack in 100 degree weather and do laundry
11.30am Drive to Ginger's preschool
12.15pm Meet Ginger's teacher
12.30pm drive "home" to Plano. Get 20 boxes ready for Ebay auctions that have ended
2.45pm Pickup older kids. I chose the carpool line, and never will again. It took me 25 minutes to drive through the line and pick the kids up.
3.oopm Drop off 20 boxes at post office
3.30pm start walking to pickup Ginger from the bus at the Elementary school. Ginger's pre-kindergarten class is organized by Plano ISD, but held at a different school in the district. In order to save myself a lot of driving, she takes the bus from our local Elementary to her preschool. Walking with 2 tired kids in 105 degrees is not a good idea! Next time I'll swap the pickup methods. I'll walk to get the older kids (when the school is a zoo), and drive to pick up Ginger.
4.oo pm Fill out the huge stack of papers that the kids invariably get sent home with. I say: save some trees and combine the 10 different forms that all ask for the same information anyways.
Then I made another trip to the post office for a few more Ebay items I hadn't sent earlier.

Before I know it, it's 6pm, and everybody is hungry for dinner. So I cook. As soon as dinner is over, it's already 7.15pm, which means it's time to get the kids ready for bed. They are all in bed now (7.45pm), but my to do list is still never ending. I should clean up all the boxes that are stacked in the front hall, but instead my hip is telling me to sit back, and watch some mindless TV.